Properly conducted content marketing attracts audiences/customers, builds a company's position, and determines its recognizability.
Definition of Content Marketing
Content marketing is nothing more than creating, publishing, and distributing content of appropriately high quality. Often, "Content marketing" is translated as "content marketing". Such content is intended to enhance the image or sales message of a particular company. Content is most often in the form of text, but content marketing can also take the form of photos, videos, music, or - increasingly - combine these different types of messages. Content marketing is intended to help build a relationship with the customer over a longer period of time by providing them with quality content on topics that interest them. It should contain a lot of useful information that will convince the reader to make specific decisions, most often related to purchasing the company's products.
Types of content delivery in Content marketing
The most popular form of content in Content marketing is the already mentioned text, which is essential. Within this category, thematic articles are the most important, including expert materials written in a specific way, known as copywriting. They should focus on originality and uniqueness - the worst thing that can happen is content duplication. For this reason, texts written by AI programs are not highly regarded here. In addition, internal and external content are important elements, including those with links - referring to partner websites, as well as blogs that have entered into partnerships (many institutions also have their own corporate blogs). The role of social media posts has been growing for some time now, allowing for reaching a much larger target audience, as well as email campaigns directed at specific customers. The second most common form of content in Content marketing is photos/graphics. They usually serve as an addition, but market research shows that when used skillfully, they attract more attention than textual messages and are more effective. Infographics, tables, and charts must be mentioned here - many people are visual learners, preferring clear visual representations over even the most interesting text. A middle ground between infographics and expert materials are presentations combining the characteristics of both elements. The third way of delivering content is through videos - presentations, reviews, webinars, etc. Technological advancements and changes in how messages are received (traditional messages are less attractive to younger customers, who are used to changing strong messages) favor the development of video content, although not every industry should focus on it - in some cases, content quality is more important than "sensory overload" and grabbing attention. The fourth method is sound, with podcasts being a prime example. This is also not a solution for everyone, targeting a narrower group of people who are already familiar with the topic.
Tasks of Content marketing
The main task of Content marketing is considered to be building engagement with the audience of the content. Engagement means both attracting their attention and maintaining it (examples include regular newsletter readers, subscribers, forum participants). This translates into measurable results today in terms of website visits, interactions on the site, which in turn determines the positioning of the site (and at the same time how it is perceived as expert, worth attention). Therefore, Content marketing builds brand recognition, popularity, trust in it, and promotes its products or services in the process. If customers trust the company thanks to Content marketing, they will recommend it to others (similar to viral marketing, where "viral" is a positive concept), so it can be an excellent element of a long-term advertising campaign. It is important to emphasize the word "long-term": Content marketing rarely works as a short-term increase in profits or popularity for a company.
How to increase the effectiveness of Content marketing?
When focusing on Content marketing, it is important to have specific goals - we are talking about distribution channels (blog, newsletter, forums, social media, etc.) and the target group to which the content should reach. It is important to determine how this group presents itself, for example in terms of age (older people prefer text, younger people prefer images), gender (statistics show that men prefer graphics with text, women prefer text), and in terms of expertise (there are narrow industries where it is known that the recipients will be knowledgeable on the topic and general information will not interest them, on the contrary). Content should be optimized and well analyzed for effectiveness - there are many programs that offer this, with Google Analytics leading the way.
